Which means, I spent an hour running errands and the rest of the day cooking.

I wanted to bake a pie. A chocolate pecan pie. Specifically, this one. This pie is the easiest pie in the world to make. Assuming that you have pre-shelled pecans. Which I didn’t. I had a giant bag of fresh pecans my aunt and uncle had given us from Charlotte. How hard could it be to shell a cup and a half of pecans? That’s nothing! Or, so I thought.

About five hours later (I am only exaggerating slightly), I emerged victorious with my shelled nuts and turned my attention to the pie crust.

(Insert pie-crust-making-and-errand-running here. I really need a food processor. I hate cutting the butter into the flour by hand. Really really really really hate it. I’m bad at it too. Which is part of the reason I hate it.)

For dinner, I made roasted butternut squash soup, pan-fried salmon with spicy honey mustard sauce, and Israeli couscous. I told Jesse this was the most involved meal he’d eat for the next four months. The dinner was really just an excuse to use some toys I got for Christmas, specifically my immersion blender and my new Bialetti pan (love!).

Then Jessica came over to hang out and play music, and she bravely taste-tested the pie with us. The pie crust had kind of fallen over in one spot, so it wasn’t the most attractive pie ever, but…

…

Ohmygoodness.

Let’s just say, if shelling those pecans wasn’t so gosh-darn difficult, I might make this pie on a weekly basis. And then I would weigh 200 pounds. But I wouldn’t care. That’s how good this pie is.

Today being my last day of break and all, I think I’ll celebrate by eating the rest of the pie.

In the meantime, I’m working on my syllabi for this upcoming semester, putting readings on the schedules, deciding on office hours, trying to arrange things just so. Fall, I’ve decided, is my favorite semester. All the stores are advertising their back-to-school sales, and there’s something lovely about aisles of orange pencils and notebooks and Elmer’s glue. We all get a fresh start, a clean slate, and the world is full of possibility.

The Great Purge of 2011 is coming along nicely, though the result is that our bedroom is now overflowing with all the stuff that needs to find its way out of our house, one way or another. I’m hoping a Goodwill run is in our near future.

The weekend holds great promise: Goodwill perhaps, and time with a friend who is coming to town from Atlanta, and maybe–just maybe–I’ll get back to that thing I was writing in California.

Now, if I can just kick this cold…

“So,” McArdle points out, “we have something of a mystery. Just when our labor in the kitchen has fallen, we have seen the rise of the gourmet kitchen: the high-end retailers like Williams-Sonoma…the Sub-Zero refrigerators…the $10,000 Viking stoves…the $250 Breville toaster ovens…the Japanese knives with their own display stands. Why are we spending so much money on a place where we spend so little time?”

Her findings and conjectures are quite interesting. She supposes that the way we look at cooking has changed–from a job to a leisure activity. (A leisure activity, I might add, that we now like to photograph ourselves doing.) Worth a read, and worth a ponder. I, for one, can’t wait for the semester to be over so I can jump back into my own kitchen, even with its lack of fancy gadgets and high-end appliances…

An illustration: Friday was April Fools’ Day. My favorite of all minor holidays. I might even enjoy AFD more than my birthday. I look forward to it all year. This year? I didn’t pull one prank. Not even in my classes. I didn’t have time or mental energy enough to think one up and then execute it. I was going from 5:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. I taught three classes, spent three solid hours in back-to-back conferences with students, then volunteered that evening at an event that required me to run around like a crazy woman, giving people candy and making fun of them. (Ha. I could explain, but I think I’ll just leave it at that. Jesse and Warren and Kirsten and a whole bunch of other people did it too.)

This past weekend was a mix of work and fun, with a little more time spent on work than fun. We spent most of Saturday cleaning house, and then we had back-to-back birthday celebrations that evening. We got home after midnight. Sunday, I actually cooked something. Wow! I’ll post pictures later.

And then, the workweek began again, and everything I have to get done is bearing down on me. Jesse has started a new music project. I am dreaming of vacations that won’t happen.

I accidentally broke my French press carafe this morning while cleaning it.

I stood at the sink and started to bawl. I love that French press. And it made me think of my mother-in-law, of being in Florida with my family, of Christmas break. Jesse was there, and he tried to comfort me and tell me we could get a new one, etc., but that wasn’t what I was really crying about.

I’m just tired.

Four weeks. Four weeks. Four weeks. I can make it.

Wisteria at the Summer Palace, Beijing

I usually take the weekend off from blogging, but today I’m in such a good mood I thought I’d better write now before things change.

Last week was absolutely brutal. Jesse and I were running up on the deadline to finish processing my niece’s senior pictures, but we weren’t concerned, as we had no other plans all week. Then, we found the leak. That chewed up a huge chunk of time and pushed the image processing late each night. Tuesday, we were up until 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, 12:30 (the day had started at 5:30 a.m.). Thursday, I didn’t get to bed until around 1:30 a.m. and had to get up four hours later.

Friday, I taught three classes, answered about three hundred essay-related questions (can you tell their deadline is approaching?), and then babysat a three-year-old and an eight-year-old on campus for three hours.

After that, Jesse and I went to McDonald’s for cheap food. Since I had successfully lived through the day and kept all children in my care alive and whole on only four hours of sleep, I rewarded myself with a $1 soft-serve cone.

Then, I went home and fell fast asleep during Wheel of Fortune. I was in bed by 8:30 and didn’t get out of bed for another twelve hours.

Aahhhh.

The day is overcast and cold, but we’re getting things done. Jesse mowed the grass. I’m doing laundry. I updated our budget and the checkbook register and realized that we have been able to absorb all the car-related costs without touching our savings or emergency fund. I guess the “spending ban” we put in place at the beginning of the year is paying off–we may not contribute to savings this month, but our output is under our income at least enough to handle some unexpected expenses.

Also, the wisteria is in bloom; the trees are weeping purple. I love wisteria, its color, its little flowers, how you never really know it’s there until one day everything explodes lavender. We have a wisteria plant that Brandon brought us years ago, and I noticed that it’s made it almost all the way up the ugly tree in our backyard and is blooming for the first time this year. It makes me smile.

Wisteria also makes me think of China. I went with Brandon and Kara almost three years ago. In Beijing, we visited the Summer Palace, which sits near a lake and whose name literally translates as “Gardens of Nurtured Harmony,” and the wisteria was in bloom. We walked through one of the loveliest places–looking at the lake, the palace architecture, the bold colors, the marble “boat.” I remember it being hazy that day (really, every day we were in Beijing), and I remember being tired. But mostly I remember the wisteria, the gorgeous dripping purple blossoms. The thrill of being somewhere foreign, and the pleasant shock of seeing something familiar.

Thought of the day, revised: Why, oh why, did I purchase clothing that required ironing?

(Mom: Just kidding! We ate organic, pastured chicken and fresh vegetables and home-baked wheat bread! Really!)

After dinner, we discussed our plans for that evening. The sky was still light out, and we had the whole evening free. I had worked all weekend long grading papers, and we hadn’t had a free evening with nothing to do in a while.

The freedom was a little daunting. So many options. Would we watch a movie? Cruise the mall? We couldn’t even come up with a long list, as we had become accustomed to having no free time.

First, though, we had to gas up Jesse’s car at Costco. While we were there, we figured we’d pick up a few things on our shopping list (some cleaning products, shampoo, bread). It was the first time Jesse and I had been in Costco together—how exciting! We spent about an hour in the store and came out with all sorts of things we really did need, including forty-two pounds of cat litter. Forty-two pounds!

When we came home, we fed the cats and again wondered how we might spend the remainder of our evening.

Then, Gracie threw up. Twice. We cleaned that up. We put away all our bulk purchases. By this point, it was about 8:00 p.m. Well, still early enough, we thought.

And then we remembered.

It.

See, before we left for work that morning, we had—for reasons long forgotten—moved the washing machine and looked behind it.

Don’t do that. Trust me.

It was disgusting. Our washing machine had leaked, and pieces of cat food and cat litter were soaking up the water and bleach, becoming…well, you can figure it out. Slimy soap dripped down the sides of the washer. Dryer lint collecting in the corners. Everything seemed to be covered in a film of cat hair and dust. The filth was remarkable. Shocking. Normally, I consider us fairly clean people. We clean house every Saturday. We pick up after ourselves. We just, apparently, don’t often look behind our washer and dryer.

So that evening, after doing our shopping and cleaning up after our cat, we knew we couldn’t let the laundry room go any longer. So, we swept and moved appliances and mopped and mopped some more (and while we were at it, we went ahead and cleaned the litter box and swept and mopped the kitchen and front entry way).

By the time we finished everything and put the washer and dryer back and got all cat accessories in their rightful places and felt good and decent about living in our house again, it was about time for bed. So much for a free evening.

Adulthood…

One day before the semester began, I tore through the house, disinfecting everything, sweeping all the floors, mopping, vacuuming, shampooing the carpets, washing all the laundry and linens…I even bleached the litter boxes and cleaned the washing machine. Our house sparkled. Unfortunately, Jesse was still sick, so I couldn’t have anyone over to show off my clean house.

No matter. Jesse slowly, slowly got better. One evening, I was making a pot of pasta with leeks and realized I had enough to feed a little army. Since a little army was not available to us, we called our friend Jessica, who lives just down the street, and she braved the potentially icy roads to help us eat the pasta while it was still fresh. On the side, we had a baguette that was so fresh I had already helped myself at least twice to bits torn off here and there.

Then the semester started, and I was off running. My office at school now has a picture on the wall and another lamp with enough soft light that I can keep the overhead fluorescents off. The light is so soothing and sweet in there, and if I keep the door almost closed the room gets nice and toasty warm. The only thing missing is a nice big mug of tea. I think I’ll work on solving that one.

What a lovely time of the semester. Everyone’s doing well. We’re all getting along splendidly, and no one’s GPA is in danger. My ENG 101 class seems filled with people eager to talk, and with some seriously interesting things to say—what a fabulous combination! I can’t wait to see how the classes develop and grow and morph.

To celebrate the first day of school, Jesse and I ate dinner at Cracker Barrel on Wednesday. Maybe it was the cold. Maybe it was the ice. But both of us just wanted the warmth and kitschy atmosphere of that restaurant. We just wanted to be surrounded by people who were on their way to somewhere else.

After classes on Friday, I took off for Charlotte to spend the weekend with my aunt. We stayed up late talking. We ate good food. We ran errands. We went to a farm in South Carolina to buy milk. What a perfect, casual weekend.

Now I’m back home, and I’ve got a bit of a breather before jumping back into classes midweek. I need some extra rest, as I’ve got a tickle in my throat that seems threatening. I’ll work a little, nap a little (hopefully), read a little. There’s Kalua Pig in the crock pot—a pork butt that’s been slowly cooking since before I went to bed last night. It’s making the house smell delicious. The house with its shampooed carpets and clean washing machine. Aaahh.

Jesse has been laid out flat by some bug he came down with right after New Year’s. And our health insurance is different this year, so he’s resisting a doctor’s visit because of the cost. So, he will suffer along here for a few more days and cave next week if there’s no improvement. He wakes up coughing and can’t stop around 4:00 every morning when the NyQuil wears off. I wake up with him. I get him a glass of water. I bring him a tablespoon of honey. I beg him to agree go to the doctor the next day. I settle for his taking another dose of medicine.

I’m very tired.

Today I’ve got big plans to clean the house, really clean it. The litter boxes need to be taken outside and scoured. The floors need mopping. The carpets need steam cleaning. Everything needs to be disinfected. The linens need to be changed. Perhaps the sparkling-clean environment will help Jesse recover more quickly. But at least I will be starting the semester with a clean house, a clean slate–and isn’t that the beauty of college, that every four months you get another crack at it, you get to start over?